Brian Horn saw that his client would miss out on millions in sales if he didn’t have a high search ranking, so he used SEO to skyrocket his ranking and generate $6 million in leads. It was all done using SEO tactics to improve search rankings, so we invited him to teach you how to do it.

1. Get visitors to interact to show Google that people engage with your site

Brian likes the design of Cracked.com because it makes people scroll down and click through to a second page to read a complete article, and that shows Google that the site’s content is interesting to readers.

Take Action:

Present your website content in the form of numbered lists with pictures so visitors have to scroll down to see it all, and break up articles into two pages so visitors have to click to see the rest of the article.

2. Send a press release so news sites will link to your blog posts

Brian sent out a press release for a blog post he wrote about what he learned from his son who has Down syndrome, and other websites picked up the press release and linked back to his blog, giving the post more credibility with Google.

Take Action:

A day or two after you write a blog post, use a free service like PRLog to send out a press release that includes a direct quote from the post and the URL.

3. Diversify your backlinks to protect your search ranking

Brian says that if websites had drawn backlinks from multiple sources, they would have been fine when Google stopped indexing blog networks, but some websites relied on blogs for all their backlinks so their search rankings fell.

Take Action:

Open an account with Majestic SEO to check where your backlinks come from, and try to get backlinks from additional sources like social media or wikis if most of your backlinks are from one site.

4. Automate blog comments so you can get more backlinks and higher traffic

Brian uses software to automatically post a large number of blog comments linking back to his sites, and this makes the sites appear more popular to search engines and increases traffic.

Take Action:

Sign up with BlogCommentDemon, enter keywords you want to target, and have the program find relevant blogs and automatically post comments on them linking back to your site.

5. Use social sharing to look important to search engines

Brian’s client’s site had fallen from the top of Google’s search results to page five, but after Brian promoted his home page and subpages with social media service SocialAdr, the site shot back up to the top of the rankings.

Take Action:

Create an account with a social media service like SocialAdr, and either pay for other people to share your site on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, or promote their sites in exchange for them promoting yours.

6. Stop using Google Analytics so Google won’t see all your SEO tricks

Brian found that SEO-optimized sites that didn’t use Google Analytics fared better in search rankings than comparable sites that did, so he’s removing all of his sites and his clients’ sites from Google Analytics and Google Webmaster.

Take Action:

Stop using Google Analytics, which could tip Google off to your SEO strategy and cause them to demote your site if they don’t like your tactics, and instead download an open-source analytics package like Piwik.

7. Put content on .edu sites so your backlinks will have instant authority

Brian inserted links to his sites in wikis built by students at Princeton and Yale, and these backlinks make his sites seem more credible to search engines.

Take Action:

Search for .edu sites that use MediaWiki, find old wikis that students are no longer using, and edit them by adding links to your sites.

8. Control suggested search terms so you can protect your site’s reputation

Brian found that Google was suggesting “Brian Horn scam” when people searched for his name, so he paid ShortTask workers to search for his name with different keywords until “scam” was dropped from the list of suggestions.

Take Action:

Type your site’s name into Google, and if it suggests any negative terms, pay workers on ShortTask or Amazon Mechanical Turk to search for your site with positive terms.

Want to make sure you get results?

Written by Sarah Brodsky, based on production notes by Jeremy Weisz

Guest

no thanks, his beongoogle1 or something like that, course failed to deliver! Sad to see people like him on mixergy! Mixergy needs better entrepreneurs!

Kerry

I am really shocked by some of the advice in this article. Points 4, 5, 6 and 7 are tactics that these days don’t even make sense for a company wanting to build a brand online or analyse their website data.

4. Instead of auto spamming people’s sites, why not engage instead? Surely that is more useful if trying to build relationships in a community. This is a nice way to annoy bloggers though.

5. Uh, again, looks like spam. Build relationships instead?

6. Really? Do you honestly think Google needs their analytics package to tell what links you’re building? So you are willing to sacrifice valuable free data for this instead? And if you are building quality links why are you hiding? If you want to hide, then I would assume you are also at an increased risk of getting banned

Read Seomoz and Searchengineland instead for more brand led seo tactics that aren’t as risky or low value.

Marc Mendelsohn

Wow I love learning new out of the box and lesser known strategies for successful SEO. Thanks Brian this is great!

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_K5OU6JJVHQEPBZWI2OFSEGWJGU R

I am also kind of suprised of seeing black hat tactics on mixergy. I don’t think these belong here, as they are basically shady business.

http://www.facebook.com/markramos83 Mark Ramos

Brian’s site is beonpage1ofgoogle.com, his title tag starts with ‘Be On Page 1 of Google’, yet when I go to Google and search, ‘be on page 1 of google’, his site is nowhere to be found. Interesting.

John Doe

Despite being a “high-profile” company, Facebook sends spam mail to UNREGISTERED members urging them to join and meet this really hot girl who wants to be their friend (even if
you’ve never seen that person before).

On a wider scale: The CIA, a department of the self-aggrandizing “US Govt.” (which we are told fights for truth, honor blah blah) – exports torture to allied lawless countries and kills hundreds of civilians with missiles when they target terrorists with drone attacks.

There are hundreds of other examples where much touted ‘industry leaders’ and ‘global do-gooders’ – indulge in activities that are absolutely opposite from their image.

Lesson: If you stubbornly stay “vanilla”, you don’t get results.

John Doe

Basically I’m just trying to stay – thank you, Mixergy. These kind of tricks are valuable to get the initial traffic boost we all look for, especially when we can’t afford Google Ads or something similar. And if search engines shoot down *these* tricks, we will come up with 10 more!

Guest

Wow this must be the most crap I have read in a long time. Seriously? Automated links have stopped working a long time ago the way the author described it.
This guy cannot generate $6 million, I sure he will have a hard time generating $60 with SEO.
Awful advice. STAY AWAY people !!!

http://www.bootstrappingincome.com/ Tim

I hope I never reach the day where I have to hire people to ‘fix’ the word ‘scam’ being associate with my name. Also, what’s up with a straight up ‘Black Hat’ post?

Anonymous

I agree with the other users here when stating that the tactics seem slightly shady (especially someone trying to build a brand based on trust). However, it’s labelled as “black hat” tactics and is correct to divulge that category of thinking.

One persons way to success may not be our own. I’ll bet Andrew isn’t going to be “sneaking” his links into .edu websites anytime soon, but finds the value in sharing this with his readers. I respect these as great ideas and thank Andrew for being willing to step outside the box and think that these tactics are useful to an entrepreneur.

Brian thanks for being willing to share some things that helps in your own business! That takes guts! I would’ve never thought of putting links in .edu or that those search rankings put you higher with google.

http://www.bootstrappingincome.com/ Timothy Vallier

Also, it’s ironic that he’s placed “brain horn scam” in other posts around the web, negating his efforts to squelch it.

http://www.empiresteals.com/ Empire Steals

Thanks Brian for taking the time. I thought the tips definitely give me a good list to work on to improve the SEO of my site. I also appreciate your honesty in sharing some of your tips and secrets you use for clients.

Thanks!

John

These tatics worked five years ago.

Jamest

Ya and curious as to why Andrew hasn’t responded yet..

http://www.mercadeoporinternet.com rafaelmontilla

Brian, there are bad reviews about you, that is not good for a SEO.
I never believe people that says, they have the key to open God house……

How can you advive to do Blackhat?
I can only understand that you are doing old days school SEO, and your looking for just newbies.

http://mike-hostetler.com Mike Hostetler

Very disappointed to see Black Hat tactics brought up on Mixergy. This content and interview stands out as an outlier compared to other content on this site.

“A Jedi strength flow from the Force, but beware of the Dark Side.” – Yoda

andrew

This is mostly bad advice. Disappointed in Mixergy for publishing an article on outdated Black Hat:|

Steve McPhee

I haven’t watched the interview so perhaps some of this was covered off there- and this was done as a ‘retro’ piece or ‘what used to work’ or something; but have to say, based on what i’ve read above, this is the worst advice i’ve seen on Mixergy (in an area i’m pretty familiar with). That fact that this just came out after the latest Google update means the advice here is even more out of date.
Very disappointed Andrew, I’ve come to expect better than this.

Guest

In the actual interview autospamming is not suggested. Using a tool to find blogs in your niche, and then post relevant comments is suggested. So using a “spammy” tool in an unspammy way to speed up the process.

Crowd sourced social sharing is not spam…great way drive traffic and get the social signals needed.

Giving anyone access to all your company’s data when you dont need to is not to bright. If you have so little revenue that you can’t pay for analytics sofware, there are several other free ones that will not give all your stats to Google (piwki.org is a good free one).

Building relationships is fine and dandy…but business that are up and running need immediate results.

Brand building as a business’s primary marketing goal is a recipe for failure.

justsaying…

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Thanks.

The last ones were especially fun to hear because no one talks about them.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Unfortunately, I don’t think the Cheat Sheet can fully show what he talked about in the course.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Thanks.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

I feel like I get more email from Facebook than all my other senders combined.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

If it’s done, then I want to learn how it’s done.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

I’ve seen other guests do that. I tried to point it out in interviews about it, without accusing anyone outright.

As an interviewer and researcher, it makes my job incredibly hard when my guests manipulate their search results. But no one should live their life to make my life easier. If influencing results works for you, do it.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Thanks!

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Right. If it’s being done, I want to learn about it.

Frankly, even if you never use these tactics, you should still learn the thought process behind them because it’ll help you think more creatively.

Jeff

Sorry Andrew. This is a disappointing episode. You really shouldn’t have published it. Lots of other people make money in uninspiring ways too. Spammers, patent trolls, etc. I hope mixergy will stay away from going into that direction. Here’s a potentially better seo strategy: if you made a mistake, apologize and correct it publicly. (yes, I am asking you to take it down and tell the world where mixergy stands)

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

I’m glad people talk openly on Mixergy. Aren’t you?

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

We had to pull a bunch of tactics because they stopped working weeks before we recorded. These kinds of ideas change often.

#8 works right now, does’t it? So do others.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Can you be more specific?

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

What’s bad about it? What’s not working? Give me clearer feedback.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Don’t you want people to talk openly here?

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Why?

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

I didn’t respond because I record interviews on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and barely have time to breath or eat in between recordings.

As for the shock that I’d talk about this, I have to tell you that I want to talk about every aspect of business here. Don’t you want people to be open on Mixergy?

Andy

Thanks, Andrew!
Dont listen to all them haters.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

Thanks. I’ve been getting skewered over this in private too.

Alex Galasso

I love Mixergy and the idea behind it. However, this video ruins its credibility. The advice given in this video is either 10 years out of date (i.e Comment Spam) or just plain ridiculous (i.e. paying people to search terms in Google to remove “Brian Horn scam”). And besides, we should be asking ourselves why, in the first place, “Brian Horn Scam” was a keyword associated to him in the first place? If you guys want proper SEO information, check out SEOmoz.org and Rand Fishkin. @AndrewWarner:disqus I noticed you did an interview with Rand, any chance of having him (or someone from his team) teach a class on Mixergy would be huge and credible?

http://mike-hostetler.com Mike Hostetler

I do want people to talk openly, but the fact that you’re hosting this content implies in your approval of the practice, which in turn hurts the web as a whole.

Rather then just complain, I’d like to suggest an alternative:

Share both sides. There are real consequences to Black Hat SEO that should be presented along with the benefits. Maybe reach out and interview Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz to offer an alternative view.

I enjoy Mixergy because you are honest and open, but I feel that listing and promoting a Black Hat SEO course really trashes the Mixergy brand. It’s viewed as a very negative thing on the Internet. Automatic blog comments is SPAM and nobody likes spam.

Marc

He’s stating clearly in the title “Black Hat SEO.” I don’t understand why so many visitors are complaining!? Don’t like it? Don’t read it! Go Mixergy!

http://www.empiresteals.com/ Empire Steals

I agree Marc!

Well said! If someone is willing to be open about some tactics that can help all of us then wow I feel bad for them.

have a great day

http://www.empiresteals.com/ Empire Steals

I mean…if someone is willing to be open about some tactics that can help all of us then that is great! I really appreciated Brian for being open about what he uses. I feel bad for the people who cannot see that and just complain.

http://www.empiresteals.com/ Empire Steals

Rafael, did you watch the actual full video interview yet? I thought it was actually really good.

there are bad reviews on the iphone or ipad or restaurants that you may like too but does that make them bad?I thought getting backlinks was a pretty standard practice of SEO, right?

http://blog.blainelight.com/ Blaine Light

I agree Marc. These are clearly stated as “Black Hat tricks”. Andrew’s job isn’t to filter his interviewees, but rather to encourage people to think in different ways. The 1st 3 tips are all White Hat SEO anyways! If you don’t like it, don’t read it! There’s tons of other useful advice on Mixergy.

http://twitter.com//BrainScraps Isaac

Andrew,

I think that you need a disclaimer or an advisement on the top of this interview/cheat sheet. You are defending yourself saying that you want to instruct people about these techniques of SEO, but you position Mixergy as a proponent of black hat.

If all that you do is talk about the upsides and don’t provide a clear warning to your audience, you are damaging your credibility and brand.

I appreciate your efforts always, but it seems that you didn’t treat this powder-keg with the caution it deserved. Damage control time.

http://www.mesimoniv.com Mark Simon

I have only read the Cheat Sheet and I think a lot of the negative comments are likely stemming from just it. As an SEO professional for the past 5 years, this reads like the get rich quick rip off schemes that have been hawked online for years.

Here are the parts that really stand out as shady:

#4 – “automatically post comments” – How would you like it if someone pointed a script at your site to autopost comments that add nothing of value on mass. If your not sure I am happy to give you a taste ;-)

#7 – ” find old wikis that students are no longer using, and edit them by adding links to your sites.” – This is just dirty and how you end up with links for gambling, online casino and insurance on a students page about solving world hunger. It works, it’s dirty and you deserve to have your site banned from Google and the rest of the web for doing it.

#8 – This violates Amazon’s Mechanical Turk guidelines and can get you banned from the service; I’ve had it happen.

Maybe the full course informs people how to do it in a non shady way, but the way it is worded here just sounds dirty to people who have been in the game.

http://www.empiresteals.com/ Empire Steals

John I would love to hear what tactics you use now that we can all learn from because it sounds like you use some current SEO tactics that were not mentioned.

Could you put a lengthy post here to help us all out?

thanks

http://twitter.com/CoachGogo Gogo Erekosima

Andrew,

Many people are basically pseudo-religious about what constitutes black hat vs. white hat and grey hat without examining the assumptions on which those tactics are bad, illegal, impractical or unethical. Even though I neither endorse, nor practice risky or near-borderline tactics myself, I definitely think anyone who implements SEO without being aware competitively of what they are up against is not just a poor SEO practitioner, they’re also a poor entrepreneur.

Brunobarna

The best way to destroy your ranking and end up in googles filter..

Paul

Andrew,

Thank you for posting this information. The idea that the information should be filtered by you is ludicrous. I love what you have done with the site and the great “UNEDITED” interviews that you have compiled from both successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. I enjoy the open and truthful dialogue between you the community and the entrepreneurs. This allows others to benefit from both the triumphs and the failures of other entrepreneurs. I don’t need you to decide what tactics strategies or information will be useful to me I just want it compiled well with strong production value and easily searchable as you have always done so well.

I will decide what to watch and what tactics I will use and specifically what my tolerance to risk is. Any multi start up entrepreneur knows many things have to be considered in order to improve your critical thinking around any topic and most importantly many times innovation occurs when trying to figure your way around the status quo.

The other point I have to make to the white hat, black hat, google is great drones is..GOOGLE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND nor are they the arbiter of what is correct and true on the internet. Google wants you to believe they are but they are not we did not elect them and given their actions across the past 10 years I would suggest that it does not get more evil than google.

You objective is to bring people to your site or offering and hopefully develop your brand and product and make some money along the way. Decide what your tolerance to risk is and stay within those parameters but don’t hate or try to silence others because their risk tolerance is higher than yours or that they have not drank the google kool aid

Thank you again Andrew you had great idea and have executed perfectly on it. Keep it unedited and real.

Trademark Buster

Wow, nothing like a bunch of whiners. I have news for all you non-SEO sheeple out there who are probably regurgitating everything you’ve ever heard about the mysterious and taboo “black-hat” techniques instead of trying it out for yourself.

You want to learn about some real BH techniques, go study up and implement some cloaking….that will give you some perspective on what it means to be BH.

Anyway….

1. What Andrew has outlined (at least from what I can see in this post) is more grey-hat techniques than black-hat.

2. Don’t believe everything Google tells you. Some of it is mis-information.

3. In my experience, it’s typically the folks who are on the Branding side of things who get all wound up over the BH discussion. That’s because they don’t try/test/evaluate anything for themselves.

In the end, all Google really cares about is you providing quality content to the end user. . The means by which you put that content in front of the user is up to you – and yes, I can back that up.

Kudos to you Andrew! – for having some balls to get the truth out of your guests.

http://socialwebqanda.com/ Andrew Walsh

I was about to comment somewhat negatively on the promotion of black hat in this course, but Marc and Blaine’s comments have gotten me to change my mind. The tactics are clearly identified as such, many are used by big brands, and the majority don’t even qualify as pure “black hat.” Andrew’s point about talking openly really speaks to me. I certainly wouldn’t want to sign up for a course that censors a whole line of thinking about online businesses. Mike’s comment about sharing both sides is valid, but I would point to practically all of the rest of the content on Mixergy as evidence Andrew is doing just that.

http://www.facebook.com/inservo Phil Kowalski

andrew: being open on mixergy means for you to accept shady tactics? Interesting, then maybe fooling bank customers with products nobody understands is ok as well (at least it’s legal) or selling overpriced products? All legal in the end, all making their money for the creators… however, I thought mixergy is different. At least this has shown me it isn’t and in the end you do a lot of hype on your site but in the end the interviews are okay and nice but nothing spectacular anymore (some of them pure self promotion in my eyes). I am off with this and have better ways to spend my hard earned money.

http://twitter.com/TyrellLiddell Tyrell Liddell

I just watched the course. Great info!! This cheat sheet just skims through it. You guys are on the outside looking in and hating on what you don’t see. Do you really think Andrew is going to bring someone on just to show you how to be shady? Come on guys. Obviously you’re on this cheat sheet because what you’ve been trying in seo isn’t working or its costing to much. So take what works for you and leave behind the .edu wiki and auto-comments.

Tony

Yikes… As an actual web strategist for the past 17 years, this makes me cringe. When looking for a reputable SEO, one only needs look at Horn’s own site to see how out of date he is, white hat or black. His footer shows a copyright of 2009. This absolutely reflects on his tactics and makes me question what he’s done since 2009, and whether he even was current then. To wit, I first wrote about the ineffectiveness of Meta Keywords eight years ago. Yes, eight. Mr. Horn’s current meta keywords are:

At least the good thing is that at least one of the major engines is on record as saying they use these to match content and actually identify spam sites and black hat, and not for any actual SEO value.

If he even bothered to perform even the most basic of SEO, you know, with such groundbreaking ideas as Meta Descrips, effective use of H tags, sitemaps, etc, he could even start to find his own site ranking better. Instead, it’s just junk sites and youtube videos that reference his site, but not his own. That should be enough of a warning sign in itself.

Anonymous

But won’t Panda torpedo my site if I use these tactics?

http://profiles.google.com/cernymichael Michal Cerny

Let me first say that I love Mixergy and all great interviews that you are providing.

Unfortunately I would not recommend half of the SEO tactics mentioned above. Especially when Google just released another update to target spam. Most of the strategies mentioned will get you website penalised and are not very smart if you are trying to have your business for longer time.

I would recommend asking anyone like Rand Fishkin, Will Reynolds, Bruce Clay, Danny Sullivan or someone else who has great reputation in the industry to provide high quality SEO course.

As a general advice I would say provide great content and experience for your visitors. Have a blog and good social presence. Have a great product so you don’t have to deal with ton of bad reputation.

Anonymous

its very important that you know if using these tactics it should not be on your main money site or if you are already ranking. Some of these tactics could end up hurting your overall ranking. However there are some good tips here and some others that you would be better off avoiding. Auto Blog commenting linking back to your site especially your main money site not a good idea overall. All mass linking should be done to another web property like a web 2.0 Blog that you have set up- for example on wordpress. Then link this blog back to your money site with 1-2 links…your site is then protected from any spammy looking links like mass blog commenting. Anyway Cheers for sharing this Andrew your not “forcing” anyone to use these tactics rather opening our eyes to different concepts. Mixergy rocks!

I agree with interaction bit – with the explosion of social media and the integration of those platforms into most websites, it’s more important than ever to encourage people to share their opinions. However, YouTube is a perfect example of why this doesn’t always work out very well…those comments must be the basest form of human communication I’ve ever seen.
Also, I think a very “non black-hat” thing to do is to go back and review your backlinks wherever possible. Even if an anchor comes at the end of a great piece of original content, the wrong text can apparently slap you with a duplicate content penalty.

http://twitter.com/nartz nathan artz

Andrew,
Well done with this article. The quality is conveyed by the polarized discussion in these comments – whenever people are emotional, you know you’ve hit something that they care about either deeply positively or negatively. This is what I feel the core of mixergy is – the honest truth, take it or leave it, and why I will keep reading.

Scott Brooks

Great points. Thanks for being the first person to point out the strong possibility of being banned from Google due to these tactics. While they may indeed get your ranking up, there is a high probability of being caught and I think for any right-minded entrepreneur, that gamble isn’t worth it.

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

When I read #4 on its own, I thought, “when did we talk about that?” It didn’t sound familiar.

So I went to the that part of the course to pay closer attention. Turns out there’s a lot of context that the Cheat Sheet didn’t capture because it’s goal is to pull out just *the actionable parts,* that are *easy to communicate in about 3 sentences.*

Overall a good list, but I do not agree with #4. Automated comments may have worked at one point, but I think Google is going to start catching on. Plus, programs like Blog Comment Demon are basically like article spinners in the way they “change” your comments – they look horrible to people who actually read them.
Besides, the high-PR blogs that are really going to give you good backlinks are also usually moderated. You’ll have to say something of substance to get that great backlink from the owner.

http://zrdavis.com/ zrdavis

The energy invested in trying to outsmart Google exceeds what’s required to formulate original, engaging content. I don’t get why people are looking for shortcuts. In the rare instances when they do work, it’s only temporary. Google will catch on and getting de-indexed is not worth the momentary spike in traffic.

http://www.fernandoveloso.com/ Fernando Veloso

Hi Andrew, greetings from Portugal.

Honestly, and I consider myself a experienced optimizer (fulltime since 2004), this is one of those pieces that makes you go hummmm. Blog comments? What an awful idea. Spamming Google is definitely NOT the way you get noticed. Author was crazy or what?

Anyway, there are other precious tips in there: 1, 3 and 6. I won’t get into details about them, but there are definitely worth reading and taking action.

All the best,
Fernando V

Fernando

Wrong.

Just #4 and #7 are outdated. All the others are more relevant THEN EVER. Especially #1, #3 and #6.

http://www.medi101.com Emr Vendors

Thanks andrew

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TPESQLI7U6G7TX6KPPFJQ3AFGA Seattle Dev

Fernando,
Do you guys offer SEO services? Would love to chat.

Thanks

http://www.usemeplz.com/ Usemeplz

Thanks for the information useful. If you have so little revenue that you can’t pay for analytics sofware, there are several other free ones that will not give all your stats to Google.

http://www.twitter.com/jugmendra Jugmendra

Must share article. Google is continuously changing it’s algorithm so it is much harder to achieve good ranking by doing the ordinary stuffs. Google started thinking like a being not a bot or robot. We need to be much smarter to beat the all latest algorithms, all we need to do is to spread our brand in natural way.

I can give you one quick tip:

>>Let take an example of Man-1 has relationship with thousands ordinary men like crowd of classmates, Colleagues or the men in surrounding.
>>And other Man-2 has relationship with hundred extraordinary men like celebrity, leaders, expert professional.

So think a bit, which one is greater. Man-1 or Man-2 ??

Surely Man-2.

One of the best advice from me is that “Spread brand or website to hundreds of extra ordinary resources and i am certain that other thousands ordinary will automatically get to know about you”

http://mixergy.com Andrew Warner

In this case, he didn’t mean it as a money saving option.

Paul

No, but Penguin will – google is really cracking down on any less then ethical link building techniques!

http://bestlookingmanintheworld.com/ Joel

This has to be a joke, right? “Automate blog comments”? “Stop using Google Analytics”?! I sure hope my competitors heed all of this advice.

http://creativefrappe.com/ Micah Flores

#7 Certainly has dirty all over it.

Most of the tips are black hat and that would get you banned from Google.

SEO success can be proven by numbers and statistics. All of them are missing on this post.

Yes I want people to be open. But I dont want advices that are outdated and can ruin a business in an instance.

Sorry for my poor English but I am German :p

Anonymous

I guess one positive to come from this is a list of “what not to do”

Really expected more from Mixergy rather than promoting these techniques. I appreciate you’re not endorsing them but to the layman this is just another how-to article and in essence if they follow these techniques it could likely result in more harm than good.Liam

Mike

This is an answer to all the people who are “shocked” by Brian’s SEO advice. I just can say, sorry, guys, Brian just describes how the world, how effective SEO, works. If you want to rank on the first page for a highly competitive search term, then Brian’s steps are the only the way to go and are followed by the vast majority of high ranking websites.

Just to give you an example:

1. Use a clean browser, or delete your cache, log out of all google services, and go to google.de (German google)
2. Search for a highly, easily to monetize keyword, such as “private krankenversicherung” (private health insurance) or “kfz versicherung” (car insurance).
3. Write down all links to price comparison sites (i.e. sans wiki, genuine insurance companies etc.). For the “private krankenversicherung” keyword this gives us 4 links.
4. Go to majesticseo (Brian recommended this site) and sign up for a free account.
5. Now search for information about the 4 links you got in the previous step (type in the exact link from the serp, not only the domain).
6. Pay attention to the right chart about the backlink history (click on it). Do you see the huge spikes in the number of found backlinks? Does that look natural to you? Is that organic link building? – What do the SEO experts say?
7. Pay attention to 1. the websites where the backlinks were found (often english blog sites, which contain in the article the link to the German insurance comparison site) and 2. the anchor text. Does that look like organic, quality, link building? – What do the SEO experts say?

Now a couple of questions to the white-hat SEO experts:

1. If Brian’s advice is such a bad SEO tactic, why do the websites manage to rank on the first page in google (see our example)?
2. Why do only those websites (in our example) rank on the first page that use so-called black-hat-looking SEO?
3. What do you think, would it be possible to rank on the first page in google for a highly competitive term (see our example) without black-hat SEO?
4. If you get easily banned in google/get down-ranked with these techniques, why are the sites in our example still on page 1 (page 2, 3 etc is also full of websites with “non-organic” backlink profiles)?